Spirited Away Kagome
by xXxJazzy B. RealxXx
Summary: Kagome's the typical preteen; whiny and just wants everyone to shut up and go away. The last thing she wants is her parents to take a wrong turn. Where are all these ghosts coming from and who's this strange, long-haired boy with pale eyes? InuxKag
1. Just A Dream

**_"Spirited Away Kagome"_**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or this Spirited Away crossover. **_The first time I became familiar with Inuyasha, it reminded me of Spirited Away. Chihiro and Kagome were both thrown into a world of demons/spirits, both having to find their way through despite being mere humans. However, both found new strengths and became better people. They even fell upon two handsome boys who were familiar to their pasts and fell in love...(or like)_

_So I'm combining Inuyasha and Spirited Away for a movie parody crossover. If you don't know Spirited Away, this'll help you get acquainted with it. Althought I may twist some things around a bit. I'm a bit nervous and excited doing this, so have a little faith in me. This'll be my second Inuyasha fanfiction. Let's see how it'll turn out! Read and review!_

**_Alterations with Inuyasha Cast:_**

_Inuyasha _will be a full demon and will transform into a demonic dog (he has to be in order to flow with the story line), but he has the ability to alter his appearance from human to our beloved puppy-eared teen when he chooses.

_Kagome _will have her father in this story.

Not all of the Inuyasha characters will be in this story. Miroku, for example. Sorry, girlies! Have you know I'm doing a "The Last Samurai" cross over too, so practically all the Inu-characters will be in that. Haha, Inuyasha as Tom Cruise. I may call it, "The Last Yokai".

_That too much of a change for you? Hope not._

**_Summary_**_: Kagome's the typical preteen; whiny and just wants everyone to shut up and go away. The last thing she wants is for her parents to take a wrong turn. There they are, at that strange tunnel, and that train station leads out into the field. Is this an abandoned amusement park? And then there are those empty restaurants, with mounds of piping hot food. Mom, Dad and Sota shouldn't be eating that-and they certainly shouldn't be turning into pigs! And where are all those ghosts coming from? And who's this strange, black-haired boy with the pale violet eyes?_

**_Chapter One: "Just A Dream"_**

The crayon-colored drawing of the three girls' faces squeezed onto the farewell card mailed a reminder of homesickness to her heart...

"We'll miss you, Kagome - Your friends, Ayumi, Yuka and Eri." A monotone voice of a teenaged girl orated.

"Kagome? Kagome! We're almost there." The optimistic call of her father didn't nudge her indifferent attitude any farther away.

A bouquet of cherry blossoms was lowered between the crackling of the plastic wrap to reveal a pair of bare legs and yellow sneakers. The exaggeratedly bored face of thirteen year old Kagome Higurashi stared at the car-ceiling, dull brown eyes half-lidded under her wild black bangs. Her back was laid against the back seats of the car with her sprawled raven-black mane framing around her head.

"This really is in the middle of nowhere; I'm gonna have to go to the next town to shop." Kagome could hear her mother, Mrs. Higurashi, gently nitpick.

The vehicle bumped and jumped over the narrow speed lumps as Kagome's body rocked to and fro with its jagged tempo.

"Dad, are you sure this is the right place? It looks like one of those small towns with ten people living in it." Sota, her little brother nagged whilst tugging on his obese cat's paws.

"Meow-ow?" Buyo the Calico mewed.

Mr. Higurashi tried to mend their complaints with his thread of words, "We'll just have to learn to like it, that's all."

Kagome angled her head at her parents in the slightest lazy effort to stare into the backs of their heads.

The back of one black-haired head craned its neck to the window. "Look Kagome, there's your new school!" Mr. Higurashi glimpsed at her, giving her the blinding glisten of his glasses and beaming grin. "Looks great, doesn't it?"

Kagome slothfully shifted her dead eyes to the window as she heard her mother admit, "It doesn't look so bad."

"It looks like a run down factory..." Sota drawled dryly under his breath.

His older sister dragged up off her flat back, taking more time than needed and peered out over the windowpane of the car door.

So that was her new school, huh?

Kagome flickered out her tongue to give it a piece of her mind.

She dropped back into a laying pose and buried her face into the seat's cushion, mumbling between muffles, "It's gonna STINK. I liked my old school." Kagome hugged her blossoms to her cheeks.

"I wonder what my school's gonna look like. Hopefully not like Kagome's." Sota brooded over out loud.

Kagome rolled her eyes and filched a glare at her blossoms.

Wait...

Were they...?

"Ah...A-Ah!" She cheeped, jostling up as the petals fell from their shiveling buds. Urgently, she shoved the bouquet between her parents in a single panicky thrust. "Mom! Dad! My flowers are dying!"

"Aw come on, Sis. They're just stupid flowers. You can buy some more!" Sota nicked at Buyo's right ear.

"What would YOU know about it?" Kagome practically bit his head off. "They're a going-away present from friends I'll never see again! Your friends didn't even bother giving you anything. That is, if you ever HAD any friends to begin with."

"Mooom!" her kid-brother whined.

Mrs. Higuarshi didn't even so much peek back at the wrangling siblings. "Well Kagome, I told you not to smother them like that."

Kagome face-faulted...

Her mother looked outside the window to survey the houses. "We'll put them in some water when we get to our new home."

Fed up, Kagome slinked back. "I finally get a bouquet and it's a goodbye present; that's depressing."

"Daddy bought you a rose for your birthday," Her mother reminded thoughtfully as she studied the farewell letter. "Remember?"

"Yeah, OHE. Just one rose doesn't make it a bouquet." Kagome edged her hunched back into her seat, eyes in a slit slot of monotony again.

"Hold onto your card, I'm opening the window." Mrs. Higurashi handed her the goodbye card. "And quit whining. It's fun to move to a new place. It's an adventure."

Kagome gazed out of the dropping window, squinting against the lukewarm breeze of afternoon climate. The metallic exterior of a gas truck passed by, briefly blocking her view of the streetlamps.

Sota's hand cupped his face as he too stared into the new world that awaited them.

As the small car swerved uphill, grey road pavement evaporated into dirt tire tracks. The car stopped beside a gargantuan tree that had more arms than an octopus.

"Woah, look at that octopus tree..." Sota awed.

"It looks like more like a squid, not a stupid octopus." Kagome patted back her yawn.

Mr. Higurashi poked his head out from his window, face winded up in a parcel of confusion and disagreement. "Wait, did I take the wrong turn?"

Up ahead was only crowded trees that would lead them into a tunneling forest.

"This can't be it!" Mr. Higurashi fine-tuned his glasses a little more.

Mrs. Higurashi twisted her notice into the opposing direction. "Look! There's the house."

Her husband reeled his head into her lane to see. "Eh?"

"It's that blue one on the end." She orally pointed to the small blue house planted on the hill next to the other teeming residences.

Both lost and confused, Sota and Kagome moved into their mother's pointing direction.

Mr. Higurashi's tone reflected some laughing relief, "Oh, you're right. I must've missed the turn off. This road should get us there."

"Dear, don't take a shortcut. Not that I've been counting or anything but you always seem to get us lost." Mrs. Higuarshi pleaded behind a timid smile.

"Truuuust me, it's gonna work."

Kagome's eyes, however, were more attracted to the little miniature homes that resembled bird houses piled up and abandoned against the huge 'Octopus/Squid Tree'. But instead of eggs, leaves and soil nested in them. Bird houses weren't occasionally put on the ground, either...were they?

Kagome 'hmph'-ed in contemplation, finally interested in something that crossed her boring path today. She went on staring as the car strolled onward.

"What are those stones?" Sota asked, almost for her. "They look like weird little antique houses."

Mrs. Higurashi glanced at them. "They're shrines. Some people think little spirits live there."

_'Spirits, huh?'_ Kagome's eyes narrowed in sarcasm. _'Yeah right.'_

The shades of the arched trees darkened the atmosphere in the car, little splinters and shards of sunlight racing along the hood that peeked through the shadows of tree leaves.

"Dad, I think we're lost." Kagome announced what they were all thinking.

"We're fine." Her father thumbed his nose. "I've got four-wheel drive."

The car wheeled over a rattling stump.

"Ah!" Sota's body jerked with his cat, but he managed to hold onto the side of his mother's passenger seat from his standing position.

"Sit down please, Sweetie." Mrs. Higurashi smiled blankly.

The car was suddenly journeying over a chain of toothed rocks and pebbles, but Mr. Higurashi seemed to be gaining speed anyway. All the items, even the cat, were shaking out of control like a furniture and feline party.

Ultimately, Sota was yanked back into his seat by gravity.

Kagome gripped her flowers, eyes wide. She had managed to catch sight of a troll-like statue that bared a leering smirk at her through the trees. Her eyes followed the statuette even as the car passed it.

"Ahhh! Daaad!" Sota hugged his cat; the world was moving too fast.

Even Mrs. Higurashi seemed to give in, "Honey. Honey! HONEY!"

But her husband helmed straight through a blocking limb.

"Slow DOWN, you're gonna kill us!" Mrs. Higurashi held onto the ridge of the car's roof.

"What's that?" Mr. Higurashi suddenly blurted, shoveling his foot down into the gas pedal and steering the car to a complete halt in front of a hindering sculpture and hollow tunnel.

His wife's nose shriveled up like Kagome's blossom buds. "What's this old building...?"

"It looks like an entrance."

She gasped as her husband stepped out of the car with a haughty simper on his face. "Dear, get back in the car! We're going to be late-Wha? Sota! K...Ka-GO-me! Oh, for heaven's sake."

Sota and Kagome accompanied their father's side as he stood in front of the profound channel way with his palm feeling about the inner wall.

"This building's not old, it's fake. These stones are just made of plaster." Mr. Higurashi's smirk slouched off his cheeks to hear the wind singing chants to their eardrums from inside the tunnel.

Buyo's ears flattened on his noggin, his body growling.

Kagome observed as the leaves at her sneakers tumbled into the unknown tunnel at the wind's seducing whistle. "Oh..." Her hair rustled under the haunting draft. "The wind's pulling us in..."

"What is it?" Mrs. Higurashi's heels clapped against the old stone flooring until she was standing behind them all. "Why's everyone so tense?"

"C'mon, let's go in! I wanna see what's on the other side!" Sota cheered, his cat clawed to his back.

Kagome pinched his eyes with a glare. "No way! Are you out of your mind?"

"Don't be such a scaredy-cat, Kagome." Her father teased.

"I'm not going! It gives me the creeps!" She held her shivering elbows.

"Let's just take a look," He suggested to his wife instead.

Mrs. Higurashi's eyebrow cocked as she gazed into the pitch black darkness before their eyes. "The movers will get to our house before we do."

"It's alright. They've got the keys! They can start without us!"

"...Alright. Just one quick look."

Kagome gasped before retorting at the two, "Forget it! I'm not going!" She scampered back to the car, standing beside the mossy old figure, thinking they would really follow. "C'mon, you guys! Let's get out of here!"

Mr. Higurashi beckoned her with a gesturing hand. "Come on, Honey! It'll be fun."

Kagome didn't care. She fisted the end of her long T-shirt and pronounced her words slowly and clearly, "I'm...not...GOING!" But standing next to that weird statue, she couldn't help but edge away.

While her distraction led her up, she winched to hear the faint clanks of her mother's heels. Sota and her parents were stepping inside!

"Kagome, just wait in the car then." Her mother recommended.

Kagome watched her mother's back through a jaw-slacked face. "B...But Mooom!" She hopped from one foot to the other as if her shoes were on fire, wringing her shirt in frustration.

The footsteps didn't wait for her...

Kagome handed that troll-thing next to her one last sneer before tripping after them. "Wait for me!"

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"Everybody, watch your step," her father advised, his silhouette vaguely distinguishable in the blackened surrounding.

Kagome felt herself instinctively cling to her taller mother's arm.

"Kagome, don't cling like a child. You'll make me trip that way." Mrs. Higurashi pleaded apologetically.

Kagome strained her sight in the blackness, not heeding her mother's words.

At the other end of the tunnel welcomed them with the architecture of an abandoned, anicent church. Dry leaves of brown decorating the concrete floors and cob webs lodged between the pillars left the family mystified. The ocher light from the exit guided their eyes to the outside.

"What is this place?" Sota piped, hugging Buyo.

"Ho...do you hear that?" Mrs. Higurashi framed the curl of her ear with her fingers to intake the mechanical engine of a streaming train line.

As silence stiffened them to listen further, the thick dapping of dripping water leaked off a fountain.

"It sounds like a train." Kagome perked up.

"We must be near a train station!" Sota beamed.

Eagerness swept through their father especially, "Then let's go check it out."

His wife nodded and followed forward with Sota.

Kagome couldn't help but stare back at the black tunnel they had left, which was telling her just how far they were submerging themselves into this unknown world. She jogged up a bit faster to walk in step with her mother, wary of that passageway and its creepy aura.

Why was everything so daggone creepy around here?

As they stepped into the light, everyone took a full minute to gawk at the unusually large meadow of salsaing grass blades, home to many more outlandish-looking statues soiled in the earth. The cottages were stabbed with holes and patched with discolored tiles. Larger buildings were seen beyond the landscape afar in the distance.

"What are those weird buildings?" Kagome spoke amongst the talkative wind, clutching Sota's small hand for some reason.

"I knew it."

The family raised their bewilderment to the father.

"It's an abandoned theme park. See?" Mr. Higurashi looked up at the building they had exited from, which appeared to be a red-painted clock house, parched by age. "They built them everywhere in the early nineties. Then the economy went bad and they all went bankrupt. This must be one of them!" He and his wife walked onward to probe around more, little Sota sprinting along.

"Wh...Where are you all going? You said just a quick look! Now let's go BACK!" Kagome balled her fingers down at her hips while they ignored her pointless screeching. "HEEEEY!"

The angered wind overtoned her yell. She fearfully spun her head around to the large clock house that towered over her. The tornado of leaves and gust egged her naked legs to start moving. Kagome hugged her overly long shirt to her stomach, frowning to hear the building's moans. Without much more defiance, she rushed for her family.

"Did you guys hear that b-building? I-It was moaning!" She babbled.

Sota looked back at his bug-eyed sister, arms behind his head. "It's just the wind, Sis. Shesh, you're a bigger scaredy cat than Buyo."

For a first, Kagome let that little insult slip and kept her focus fixated on the clock house.

"Oh, what a beautiful place!" Their mother cooed out her happy mood. "We should've brought our lunch, then we could've had a picnic."

Mr. Higurashi climbed over the boulders that lined above a drained river, holding his hand out for his wife. "Look, they were planning to put a river here."

His nose then snatched up a whiff of something rather scrumptious. He barely paid his attentions to his wife when she toppled into his side. "Hey, you smell that?" He sniffed, a firm grip on her wrist to keep her upright. "Something smells delicious."

Sota hopped over the stones to approach them. "Aw great, 'cause I'm TOTALLY starved!"

"Let's go!" His father set off in the course of his heightened nose.

"W...Wait a minute!" Kagome whined in a sort of 'wait-for-me' whimper, apparently struggling with the stupid boulders.

They hiked through an empty town of brightly painted restaurants until Mr. Higurashi guided them straight to the yummies.

"Hey! Over here, I found it!" His mouth watered at the plates of cluttered foods atop the tables of a lonesome restaurant; hot wings, chicken strips, steak, fish and yam all for the taking.

Sota and Mrs. Higurashi didn't delay to reach their father, but Kagome on the other hand, loitered far behind.

"Ahh, look at this!" Mrs. Higurashi clasped her hands, seating herself. "Come in, Kagome! This looks delicious!"

"Mm-mm," Kagome tossed her head from side to side, still hanging tight to the bottom of her shorts.

The kitchen seemed to be vacant, however. All except for the boiling steam that was left over the stove.

"Don't worry, Dear." Mrs. Higurashi invited herself to a treat of the fiery red chicken that begged her to bite into. "We can pay the bill when they get back."

"I wonder what this is..." Sota held up a slice of steak and nudged a piece into Buyo's mouth, who immediately spluttered it back out. "Aww, you don't like it, Buyo?"

"Oh, Kagome, it's delicious! You have to taste this!" Her mother lavished over her meal, mouth full of dangling meat.

Kagome frowned, shaking her head again. "I don't want any. We're gonna get in trouble! Let's just get out of here!"

"Don't worry, you've got Daddy here. He's got credit cards and cash." Mr. Higurashi grabbed four plates of food-mounds, laying them out on the table. "Want some, you two?"

"You bet!" Sota stole one of his plates. "Sis, c'mon!" He slurped up his food gluttonously. "You have to try this stuff!"

How could they be such...PIGS?

"Mm-MM!" Kagome mutely bickered, more irritated by their uncharacteristic greediness. "Come on, you guys! You caaan't!" She looked down the road, seeing no one but her stalking shadow.

The snorts and grunts of pig-like appetite only seemed to get noisier as they proceeded to wolf and gorge down on the mountains of their feast. Dropping her shoulders in angry defeat, Kagome closed her eyes and wandered off into the town alone. She scaled the tall stone steps, her arms limp. Once she reached the peak of them, her mind clicked in intrigue at the enormous bathhouse just across the bridge from her. It didn't look a day old.

Kagome inhaled her breath. "That's a little weird." She stood on the wooden panes of the bridge, reading the signs. "It's a bathhouse. Haven't seen those in awhile."

After a moment of skeptic, Kagome towed her feet to the ledge of the bridge. She bowed her body beneath the banister to see a train scraping through the station beneath the bridge.

"There's the train!" Kagome ran to the other side and leant over the bridge's edge to watch for the elongated train to scroll underneath her.

It was kind of strange to see a train around these parts. Didn't Dad say it was bankrupt and abandoned?

Suddenly, a different brand of aura stung her acuteness.

Kagome jerked her head to her left, eyes enlarging to come face to face with a boy who looked two or three years older...

Such a strange yet striking boy he was...

With a long-sleeved, tucked in Haori the color of burning red and baggy Hakama pants to match, Kagome found him outdated and weird. With thick, lengthy hair that dangled to his calves the color of onyx-black and pale indigo eyes, Kagome found him mystique and arresting.

But his shock over her seemed a bit laggy. Yet when it finally seized him, he took an unsure step frontward with a feathery breath, his mane and clothes afloat for just that instant. He looked as though he were suddenly remembering something...

Kagome reared back, confused by his unyielding stare.

As the long-haired teen continued to blink, he suddenly paced at her with a stiff demand, "You shouldn't be here. Get out of here _NOW_." His bulky bangs and forelocks swayed with the rhythm of his rough walk.

Kagome hopped off the banister, cringing when he was close enough and extended out his commanding arm. "What?"

"It's almost night. LEAVE before it gets _dark._" The boy never blinked, always glared.

Kagome's eyebrows wrinkled back as the shadows of herding clouds danced over the features of his slightly tanned face, making him look sinister.

The sun was peeking just barely between the hostile twilight clouds that kidnapped it for the night. The lamps to the entrance of the bathhouse flickered on.

The long-haired boy flung his head around to speculate the lamps. "They're lighting the lamps..." He informed more to himself before grabbing Kagome by the shoulders and spinning her around. "Get out of here! You gotta make it across the river! GO and don't look BACK!" He shoved her along the bridge hotheadedly. "Hurry it up while I distract them!"

Certain that she could run on her own, he rotated his body to the reviving bathhouse and blew a zephyr of downy blossom petals into the entrance as if to cast an unearthly spell.

Kagome watched as she ran until the fizz of the lamp's light beside her told her to keep running before it was too late for whatever it was that would occur. She clambered down the stone steps from which she came, just to stop at the last row to see nothing but darkness blinding her vision up ahead.

Squinting in a fringe attempt to continue, she rubbed her eyes silly and asked back over her shoulder, "What's up with HIM?"

Kagome raced in a marathon against time, the lights revealing translucent black phantoms that lurked the streets. Now weirded out to the maximum point, she stumbled to the restaurant her family was pigging out and tugged on her father's shirt persistently. "Mom, Dad, Sota! C'mon, quit eating! Let's go already! This place is getting weirder than it already WAS!"

But once her father's face faced her own, she was positive it wasn't her father, but...

A sweaty pig WEARING her father's stretched out clothes. The oversized beast snorted and chewed, beady eyes staring mindlessly at her.

Kagome could feel her hairs stand on end as she backed up, choking on a stifled inhale of oxygen. "D...D-Daddy?"

The pig inspected her for awhile longer before his nose wagged around for more dining. He licked at the edges of the table to slurp up leftover sauce, causing plates to clatter and shatter beneath him.

Kagome ate her gasp at the mess, horror spearing her in the eye to hear a sort of whip-cracking-sound.

A green arm lashed out and spanked a spatula across either cheek of the fat pig, skin slapping against the cooking tool until the pig collapsed right before Kagome. She shrieked, her back itching against the post pole in a feeble movement to get away from it all. When she finally regained her mind, she pushed off the post and fled from the rising pig that squealed out all its saliva.

Kagome's horrified tears pearled along her eyelashes. She stood in the center of her nightmare at the crossroads, calling helplessly, "MOM, DAD, SOTA! WHERE ARE YOU?"

Wraiths slugged around and stalked her with their hollow eyes. Nothing around here looked human, except for her...

Kagome reduced to unhealthy sobbing, "MOMMY!"

A ghostly spirit came a little too close to her, frightening her and leading her to run back to the drained river she once crossed with her family. The air was so black and thick, she had squealed to hear the splash and feel the coldness of bitter river water soak into her underwear the moment she jumped in.

"WATER?" Kagome crawled back to shore on the stone stairs.

She faced her slender body to the gold lined across the moaning clock house and a column of surrounding buildings.

"No...N-No." Kagome batted her temples with her furious fists. "I'm dreaming! I'm DREAMING!"

She peeked out to the river again, still witnessing the vision of glowing lights of amber.

"Come on, wake up, WAKE UP!" Kagome groaned as she leveled with the ground, clawing at her face until it was hidden between her tremulous legs. "Wake up..." she whimpered for the last time.

A ferry of ferrying lights of subterranean yellow at the bows and sterns was boating towards her.

"It's just a dream, it's just a dream. Go away, go 'way. Disappear." Kagome rocked herself until she realized her eyes had been shielded by translucent fingers. "E-Eh?"

She lifted her palms into the lights before her, clearly making out the dark gold tinges of illumination outlining diaphanous phalanges.

"Oh NOOO!" Kagome sprung up onto her shaky legs, wiggling her fingers desperately. "I'm SEE-THROUGH!" She tried to undo the transparency with her fingers, but then noticed that her arms were disappearing right along after. "AH! I-It's just...a really bad d-dream!"

THUMP.

She turned her head...

The ferry had arrived.

Kagome stood like a deer caught in the headlights to see the door fall onto the stone path. Papered masks floated out through the ferry from bow to stern, molding into robed bodies once they departed from the boat.

Too much...

The music, the lights, the ghosts, the insanity.

Kagome finally broke across a nearby hill, stumbling over her shoe laces and grass blades, before hiding herself behind a vacant household to shiver from her own stress.

The traumatized girl was much too busy pitying herself to notice the familiar stranger trotting over into her hideout. She went on mentally wailing, until a cold feel of fingers embraced her thin shoulders.

In a strangled gasp, she stared horrendously into the indigo eyes of the boy who rushed her off the bridge. Her face was stained with dirt lines and terror.

"Keh, don't be so twitchy. I'm not gonna eat you; I'm here to help." The stranger promised, his tone a bit more calming than earlier.

"No, no, no, no...no!" Kagome panicked, shaking her head while damp black strands flung over her cheeks. She tilted away from him, but her shoulders were still in his insistent palms.

The strange boy uncovered a red pill from the pocket of Haori. "Open your mouth and eat this." He bent closer, now demanding it. "You have to eat some food from this world or else you'll disappear."

Kagome didn't cease her constant protests. With one last retort, she thrashed her arms out in an attempt to shove him away forever. "NO!"

But she felt nothing but a ghostly aura envelop her arms.

She opened an eye, the other following suit. In another far off gasp, she gazed into the boy before her, seeing her transparent arms positioned right through his emotionless face. She contracted the muscles in her fingers a bit to grasp something, but it was only thickened air. Withdrawing her arms quickly, she noticed him bend forward even further, unfazed by her rashness.

"Don't worry," He guaranteed through an almost amused yet annoyed voice. "It won't turn you into a _pig._" He wedged the pill between her lips despite her objection. "Damn you're stubborn"-she heard him huff under his breath. "Chew it then swallow."

Kagome squeezed her eyes shut, chewing reluctantly until it was guzzled down her tiny throat. She licked the insides of her gums to remove the foreign taste, her eyes propped open.

"Theeere you go. You're all better now," the stranger almost babied her. He raised a hand. "See for yourself."

Kagome gave his palm an alienated stare, but eventually softened her tired lids and reached out. With the utmost hesitation yet finalization, her smaller fingers pressed into his larger hand. She kept it there, eyes big and atonished. It didn't go through!

The stranger's lips coiled into a smile, his eyes falling victim to the soft entertainment at her childlike amazement.

"I'm okay..." Kagome realized.

"You see? What I tell you?" He clasped her hand in two of his, the petite smile lasting.

Kagome just went on staring at him like an idiot, jaw-slacked by his mood change. She could've sworn to have seen a nippy flicker of sad love toddling around in his eyes. Just for a second or two...

Grudgingly, her cheeks tainted pink like her cherry blossoms.

But as if she jinxed the moment, his smile dropped like a rock and he hastily rose to his feet, preparing to haul her with him. "Now, come with me-"

"Wait!" Kagome grabbed his hands with both hers, not budging. "Where are my family? They...didn't really turn into pigs, did they?"

The boy frowned. "You can't see them now, but you will."

Before Kagome could respond, he was at her eye level and shielding her body behind his to the wall.

"Don't move," she heard him order and did best not to break a sweat.

She didn't know what it was he was looking at, but apparently there had been something in the depth of the skies preying them like a vulture. Kagome could only make out the scavenger wings, but nothing more. Frankly, she had tried not to look to spare herself.

When the bird eyes passed, the older boy retracted from smothering Kagome into the stone wall. "That bird's looking for you." He snatched up her wrist. "You've gotta get out of here." He stood, trying to help her, but her limbs were plastered down to the clayed earth.

"Ah! Help, my legs! I can't stand up!" Kagome squirmed with all her determination to lift herself, but it didn't help. "Help, what do I do?"

The boy took both her hands in his again, forcing her to look at the spirals of his acute violet eyes. "CALM down. Take a _deep_ breath."

Kagome, not wanting to get on his bad side, obeyed. She closed her eyes forcefully and breathed in a penetrating gasp of air into her lungs.

Her savior's fingers hovered over her calf carefully, a haloing white light scanning along her muscles and skeletal structure. "In the name of the wind and water within me, unbind her."

Kagome felt the strength return to her legs in one single surge of spasms.

"Get up." The boy demanded, asisting her to her feet before turning a moment later and darting faster than the speed of sound past the restaurant buildings. The lights and black apparitions were blurred out by the velocity he carried her in. They hurried through an alleyway, the boy using the flick of his hand to prop open a blockade door without truly touching it. He led her astray through the meat room maze, the freezer and past the pigs' stand.

Kagome found herself looking for the face of her parents and brother behind the fencing, but the pigs all looked the indentical.

When the running was no longer needed, Kagome was more jumbled than before to see this unnamed boy leading her back to the bathhouse bridge. The only difference was the mass of deformed bodies ambling across it.

The stranger's stern voice broke the spell on her thoughts. "You have to hold your breath while we cross the bridge. Even the tiniest breath can break the spell and then everyone will see you." He walked confidently as Kagome insecurely followed.

The boy didn't seem to mind it when she clung to his masculine arm through the sleeve of his Haori and embraced it to her breast. She was squeezing the juice out of it, she was sure.

"I'm scared." She divulged her fear to him, not that he didn't already know, but she felt like she were installing all her trust in him by verbally admitting and accepting it to him.

"Just stay calm." He muttered, face a valley of emotionlessness.

Kagome eyed the blind, overgrown frogs that hosted the guests at their end of the bridge. They bowed respectfully and welcomed each spirit with their night lamps.

The black-haired boy spoke dominantly over them, "I'm back from my mission."

"Ahhh welcome," a cross-eyed frog grinned from ear to ear. "Welcome back, Master Inuyasha."

_'Inu...yasha?'_ Kagome blinked up at the profile of his face, dismissing the fact that these mutated demons were speaking._ 'Doesn't that mean Dog Demon?'_

"Take a deep breath." 'Inuyasha' instructed when they finally stepped onto the creaking panels of the bridge. She did so. "Hold it."

Kagome squeezed her nostrils shut behind a bracing palm.

They walked along the bridge of eerie spirits of every size and format. Human-looking women greeted them on the other side into the bathhouse through wheedled voices. Near the end, Kagome was groaning for oxygen.

"Hang on, almost there." Inuyasha encouraged, but her face was blooming blue.

"Lord Inuyasha!" A dark-green frog came waddling up to them, his round eyes big and yellow with slit pupils and his ears pointed. "Where have you beem for all this time?" The creature leaped into the air before Kagome's face.

The terrified thirteen year old wheezed out in shock, forgetting about the spell. She looked cross-eyed down on her nostrils before hopelessly covering it again.

Once the frog was down on all fours, his mouth hung open in appall. "What's this? A HUMAN?" Making sure his eyes didn't deceive him, the little bugger sprung up to reach their faces again, but this time, he wasn't going to land back on all fours.

Just after Kagome heard a hissy-fit, "Shit", the frog was encased in a black orb of spellbind from Inuyasha's wise hand.

"Let's GO!" Inuyasha's strong fingers imprisoned Kagome's as he yanked her down with him, diving beneath the frozen frog and soaring airborne at ground level right under the kimonos of the employee women.

They giggled and reddened, trying to calm their disobedient gowns to hide their undergarments. This gave Inuyasha the chance to sneak Kagome into the garden behind the bridge.

The frog remained suspended in the atmosphere for three seconds after and then plummeted onto the hard surfaced wood. He blinked his pain away and snatched a glance from right to left. "M...M'lord?"

Inuyasha tugged Kagome through the garden patches beside the bathhouse until they were safely hidden behind the refugee of bushes. The chattering of alarmed workers scampered back and forth around the bathhouse.

"Master Inuyasha! Oooh, Inuyasha! Master Inuyasha!" The frog-legged workers cried. "Good GRIEF! Find it before it stinks UP the place!"

"They know you're here." Inuyasha growled over the employees.

Kagome swallowed under his steely eyes. "I-I'm sorry; I took a breath."

Inuyasha's gaze eased into understanding as he lowered his face to hers, almost fondly. "No, Kagome..." He whispered in his handsomely crusty tone that had seemed to lighten. "You did just fine." His face reached down closer as his eyebrow quirked. "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you to do. You can't stay here; they'll find you and then you'll never get to rescue your family."

Kagome's brown irises shuddered at the image. She bit her lip and made her strain known to him.

"I'll create a diversion while you escape."

"No!" Kagome exclaimed, fisting the fabrication of his Haori between the fringes of her fingers. "Don't leave me! I don't wanna be alone...!"

Inuyasha's facade expression never changed. He steadily unhooked her grasp from his Haori. "You don't have any choice if you want to help your family. This is what you'll have to do."

Kagome didn't whine anymore. She simply wanted to curl up into a fetus position and cry. "They did turn into pigs; I wasn't dreaming..." She admitted to herself.

The raven-haired preteen shivered strangely at the cool touch of his hand to her forehead. A light illuminated behind her cloaking bangs, similar to the one he cased on her leg.

"Don't worry." His eyes thinned. "Now, when things quiet down..."

A wooden door guarded by twin bushes of red orchids was nailed into Kagome's visualization. She could hear the long-haired boy's voice funnel her through the images:

"Go out through the back gate. Go all the way down the stairs until you reach the boiler room. There, you'll find Myoga, the boiler man."

"Myoga?" She repeated once Inuyasha's magical hand withdrew, leaving her somewhat lonesome without the touch.

The older boy simply nodded. "Tell him you want to work here. Even if he refuses you MUST insist. Got that?" His face, once again, came within mere millimeters of her. "If you don't get a job, Naraku will turn you into a mindless animal."

"Na...raku? Huh?" Kagome worded, tiresome bags of grey cupping under her chocolaty eyes that were all of the sudden rather vivid and lively.

"Keh, you'll see. He's the demon who rules these parts. Myoga will try to turn you away or trick you into leaving, but just keep asking for work. It'll be hard work," he implied, as if he had done the labor himself. "But you'll be able to stay here. Then even Naraku can't harm you. Understand?"

Through his impaling strictness, Kagome mustered out a, "Mm-hm," of perceptiveness.

"Master INU-YASHA!" The staff members roared from the bathhouse.

"I have to go," Inuyasha flicked his concentration in the route of the bathhouse's side-entrance, his forelocks flinging. He quickly went back to the frightened preteen, taking her brittle, icy fingers in his. "And don't forget, Kagome," he bayoneted her eyes with his to purposely reassure she collected the following message. "I'm your friend." He managed to half-stand before she tightened her hold on him.

"H...How did you know my name's K-Kagome?"

Inuyasha barely tendered his face by a muscle or two. "I've known you since you were very tiny...-Good luck, and whatever you do," finally, his fingers unraveled from hers and were set free. "Don't make a sound."

"Master Inuyasha!"

With all done and said, he walked calmly toward the callers, keeping his fierce posture. "Calm down, I'm coming."

"Master Inuyasha, Naraku wants to see you." Kagome heard one of the staff members inform.

"I know." Inuyasha kicked off his sandals boredly and rotated his weary arm, disappearing into the light of the steamy bathhouse. "It's about my MISSION, right?"

The slide-doors were brusquely shut, leaving Kagome out in the cold.

She dropped her face into her grated knees, whimpering...


	2. You Belong to Me Now

**_"You Belong To Me Now"_**

**_Disclaimer: _**_Thanks for all your wonderful reviews so far. This may be a long story, since, after all it's based off the award-winning animation 'Spirited Away'. It'll be worth the write! This movie's got so much going on, but everything has to work up to those points, so stick with. Next chapter will be mostly Kagome and Inuyasha centered. I'll update that tomorrow, perhaps. _

_Er, sorry, I had to give the role of The Boiler Man to Myoga instead of Totosai, mainly because of his appearance and knowledge of lore. _

_Characters Starring in Chapter: _

_Myoga_

_Sango_

_Naraku_

_Naraku's Infant Heart Akago_

_Inuyasha_

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

"There's a human roaming these parts!"

"We must find her!"

"Ah, let's go this way!"

"Wait for me! Wait for me! Wait!"

"Over here!"

Had Inuyasha diverted the minds of the demons to send them prancing around the bridge for her after all? Her scent, however, still stained the rose petals of that garden…yet they hadn't noticed?

Kagome circumspectly creaked open the wooden back gate of the garden and crept out onto the banister-less wooden stairwell rowed against the side of the bathhouse. She held onto the side of the bathhouse wall, the iced winds chilling her bones while she watched the railroad train promenade under her again.

"…Come on, Kagome! You can do this! You can do this!" Kagome gulped. _'If only Inuyasha were here right n-now…' _

Charily, Kagome lowered herself to the wooden ground and pulled one foot onto the first step. The other leg followed after. She managed the same technique with the second poor step, but accidentally slipped a few steps down with her clumsiness.

"Ooooh…" She steamed, clutched to the step for dear life. Her eyes grazed over her shoulder to memorize that long way down. _'One hundred more stairs to g-go…'_ She called forward all her courage and positioned her body to face her fears.

Kagome's sneaker stepped down on the next stair, her foot feeling about for its stability. Positive it was safe to press on, she leant all her body weight forward.

_'Y-Yes, th-this isn't so bad after all!'_ She thought all too soon.

Without warning, the stair step severed under her weight and shattered into a million splinters. Kagome's shrill scream hurt the ears of the atmosphere as her body skidded down the rest of the staircase until she met the swerving corner. Her unstoppable feet paced forward at gravity's will, causing her to throw her hands in the air and shriek helplessly. The end of the stairwell came rapidly into view. Her voice box's loud stereo continued blasting her screech through its sound ways until her body ran right into the wall at the end of the stairs and kissed the concrete. Her body fell limp a little as she eased her face away from the filthy concrete of the building, panting.

"Just let me open the window a bit…"

Kagome yanked her eyes up at the window that had snapped open above her. A hideous toad demon's head prodded out from the pane with a cigarette. He shrouded the tip with his frog-lips and exhaled a cloud of tobacco haze.

Kagome quietly edged her body further away from her spot, face still pasted to the wall until she was around the corner.

The boiler section was in eye range now. Kagome skipped down the last steps and peered at the knob of the door that led to said room. She looked around and little by little cracked it open, almost forgetting to close it behind her. She skulked into the hot, steaming room, careful not to touch the sweltering matrix of pipelines. The shadow of an elderly man danced against the wall of the room. She could hear all the hissing and rumbling of the boiler. Metal clatter and sizzling spiked her eardrums.

Kagome peeked around the corner of the wall, seeing a colony of fuzzy soot balls carrying dozens of heavy coals into the mouth of a boiler's broiling fire.

_'Okay, a little weird, but…'_ Her eyes descended over the old man at his worktable, reeling his wheel over the mashing of herbs. 'He looks pretty normal.'

From the profile of his face, she could see he was a balding man with grey hair feathering only the sides of his large head. His eyes looked buggy and two strands of his droopy mustache fell over a protruded mouth.

Kagome stepped forward. All of the sudden, she then stepped rearwards in horror.

A pair of extra arms had emerged from the boiler man's sides, one digging into a pot of herbs and the other scratching his baldhead. A fifth arm grabbed a teakettle, while the sixth yanked on the token in front of him.

Kagome gasped and whimpered. She faded back into the room she came, until another sizzling hiss spooked her. She spun around only to be swathed by the warming mist of steam. Breathing hard, she clutched her shirt and glanced over the crook of the wall.

_'…I-I have to do this…'_ Submerging back into the room of the boiler man, she spoke up, "Uh, hello? Ex…cuse me?"

The old man glanced at her while reaching for his teakettle. His mouth looked like a needle or carrot, almost like…a flea! He swigged down the substance in the kettle, liquid dribbling off his chin and went back to his work.

Kagome blinked; shocked he was so careless to her presence. "U-Uh, hello?"

She didn't feel as unnerved as before. Instead, she walked straight to his table, but she had the margins of her fingers between the fabrics of her shirt just in case.

"Uh, hello are you Myoga?" she asked louder.

"Eh?" His old eyes didn't even survey her, but meekly glanced again. And yet after her natural blood scent crossed roads with his senses, he lowered one hand down on the table to turn his body around fully. "Huh?" he moaned at her appearance, tilting forward to examine her more closely.

Kagome flinched and babied her stomach's somersaults more. Her eyes darted back and forth through the blemished floors, seeking a batch of words. She found them.

"I-Inuyasha told me to come here and ask you for w-work!" Her lips tingled at the mouthing of the letters to that strange boy's names. "Could you give me a job please?!"

A chiming jingle came between the conversation.

Four tokens suspended on dangling ribbons fell from the porthole of Myoga's ceiling. He sighed and groaned, gathering the four between his clawed hands.

"Four bath tokens at ONCE!" Myoga complained. He hammered the wheel attached to his worktable. "Come on, get to work you little runts."

Kagome turned her eyes to the soot balls, but robbed them back to Myoga when he began speaking to only her.

"Yeah, I'm Myoga, slave to the boiler that heats the baths." Myoga's voice was tired and wry as he continued his multi-tasking job. "MOVE it, you insolent soot balls!"

"Please! I've got to get a job here!" Kagome pressured.

"Ohh I don't need any help; the place is full of soot. I just cast a spell on them and I've got all the workers I need."

Kagome went back to watching the militia of soot migrate across the room with their coal luggage. A coal abruptly hit her ankle.

"Huh?" She looked down and saw a fussing soot ball. "Oh, sorry!" She raised the obstacle foot, cornered in the crevice between Myoga's high table.

Two more soot balls rammed into her other ankle, squeaking temperamently.

"U-Um, just a second!" Kagome trembled, hopping across the two soots, careful not to crush anyone.

She moved herself into another corner between the compacted drawers. Myoga's left arm elongated out to Kagome.

"Out of the way." He waved his hand expectantly, allowing her to lean away from his path.

The clawed hand pulled out a drawer and dug into it to retrieve herbal wheat. The arm extended all the way to the topper levels of stacked drawers, a pointed finger running along the names until he found the right one. It shrunk back into Myoga's body.

Kagome stared after, not knowing what else to do than just watch. Feeling like she failed, she embraced her knees and watched the soot balls.

To her surprise, one of the soot balls had tripped over its little leg, causing the coal to penetrate it to the floor. It squealed and struggled, still stuck. On instinct, Kagome reached over and heaved up the heavy coal, having to bend her back just for the effort of removing the weight. The soot ball retreated back into the mouse holes of the wall, leaving Kagome with its unfinished work.

"Um…what should I do with this?" Kagome called to the soot balls.

They all glanced at one another and went ahead with their work.

"Uhhh…"

"Finish what you started, human." Myoga suggested.

Kagome glanced at him and then down at the blackened coal. Her face became hard with determination. She sidestepped her way through the lines of soot balls that made a pathway for her, having to stop and regain her hold on the weighty coal. The soot balls watched in brewing interest as she continued to the boiler. She grunted as she proceeded onto the ledge near the flaming boiler, the freckles of sparking heat burning the white of her eyes. Sealing those eyes shut to defend them, she chucked the coal into the mouth of the monster boiler and ran behind the wall of Myoga's worktable, wheezing.

The soot balls exchanged twin expressions. Suddenly, one fell to the ground, the rock of coal crushing on top of it.

Kagome blinked dumbly…

The thousands of other soot balls did the same, all crowding over to her.

Myoga battered the table with his hammer. "Heeey, lil' runts! You wanna turn back into soot? --You, back off!" He aimed his hammer at Kagome, who creased back. "You can't just take someone else's job! There's no work for you here, got it? Try somewhere else!"

The soot balls began to rebel. They squeaked madly and piled their coals onto top of one another before Kagome, imprisoning her around the building wall.

"You soot balls got a problem? Now get back to work!"

A slide door slid open, exposing the young face of a woman with short-trimmed bangs, forelocks and a straight brown mane confined in an awfully low ponytail.

"Chow time." The woman declared, grabbing her baskets of lunch. "What's going on, are you guys fighting again?" She scoffed while dragging her naked feet across the wooden floors.

Myoga mumbled his hunger, eyes big and eager.

"Where's your other bowl? From yesterday?" The woman reminded. "I keep telling you to leave it out, Myoga."

"Meal time! Take a break!" Myoga announced.

The soot balls shrieked with excitement as they left Kagome's side and bounced off into the direction of the woman.

Kagome watched from the sidelines as the human-looking girl tossed handfuls of candy treats to them. Apparently, she hadn't picked up on Kagome, yet for when she did, gasped in appall.

Kagome gasped back to mock her.

"A human! You're in trouble; you're the one everyone's looking for!" The woman pointed accusingly.

"She's my granddaughter." Myoga lied through his blood meal, bloated from his feast.

"GRANDdaughter?" The woman's finger joint dented.

"She said she wants to work here." Myoga burped. "But I've got all the help I need. Would you take her to see Naraku? She's a tough little girl. I think she can handle it."

"No way!" The older girl furiously hurled a fist of treats at the soot balls. "I'm not gonna risk MY life!"

"What if I give you this roasted newt I've been saving? Hmm?" Myoga taunted a cooked newt over her from the tail. "It's a goood one."

The girl blushed with embarrassment from the bribe that had actually caught her consideration.

"If you want a job, you'll have to make a deal with Naraku." Myoga explained softly to Kagome. "She's the head honcho here."

"Gimme that!" The girl snatched up the offer and stuffed it in her garment heatedly. "Come on, 'little girl'. You better follow me." Her voice was sourly sweet.

Kagome climbed the wall of coal and stumbled over to the woman.

After gathering her basket, she glared down on Kagome. "Can't you even manage a 'Yes, ma'am' or a, uh 'Thank you'?"

"Yes ma'am!" Kagome chirped.

"What a dope." The girl rumbled and turned away. "Hurry up."

Kagome took off her shoes in preparation to carry them.

The woman scoffed once more. "Ugh, you don't need your shoes or your socks, just leave 'em."

"Yes ma'am!" Kagome put them down to the soot balls' level. She rushed to the slide door to meet the girl, who only stuck her face in hers to keep her from passing through.

"Thank the BOILER MAN, you idiot. He's really sticking his neck out for you."

"Um," Kagome turned, bowing nervously. "Thank you Mister Boiler Man!"

Myoga nodded optimistically. "Goood luck!"

Kagome blinked at his change of personality and crawled through the tiny opening of a door. They went through the elevator levels with the escorting woman practically badgering Kagome through the way. Once they arrived on the bath floor, the elevator doors opened.

"Ek!" Kagome peeped out at the horrid sight of an obese white monster that resembled a Radish with a red bowl for a hat.

"The…Radish demon!" The woman grinned falsely.

The Radish demon grumbled out indistinct words, lifting up a stubby finger.

"Sorry sir. This elevator doesn't go any higher. You'll have to take another one, thank you." The escorting woman brushed past him as Kagome clung to the back of her clothes, following gaplessly close.

The Radish demon's footsteps squeaked against the floors as he stalked after them.

The two girls crossed the bridge across the baths of bathing demons.

"He's following us." Kagome whined.

"Just don't look at him." The woman advised until they reached another elevator.

The Radish stopped beside them, also waiting for the doors to pry open. Once they did, a herd of toothily grinning demons flooded out of the elevator in their bathrobes. Kagome's escort hid her from their eyes behind her back.

"Just this way, Gentlemen." A toad demon ushered them. "Your rooms are right this way." The toad stopped and sniffed the air, rounding to Kagome's escort. "Hmm. Sango?"

Kagome's female escort growled out, "Whaaat?" whilst shoving Kagome into the elevator.

"What's that SMELL?" the toad hypothesized, taking in her scent. "It's human! You smell just like a human!"

"Oh REALLY?" Sango answered dryly, playing it off quite well.

"Where's it coming from, Sango?"

The Radish demon had joined Kagome in the elevator, turning around and practically squishing her with his left cheek.

"You're hiding something, aren't you?" The toad smirked. "Shoooow it to meeee."

Sango rolled her eyes and poked out her chest, digging into her Hitoe's pockets and revealing a fried newt. "Is THIS what you smell?"

"Wh-Wha!" Sweat brooked out of the toad's pores as saliva spilled over his mouth in an avalanche. "Roasted…NEWT!" His hands clasped, trying to clamp over the newt, but it was jerked back too quickly.

"No way, frog. I'm saving every last bite for myself." Sango tantalized him with the available food, smiling.

"Pleeease, just a little bit?" The clothed toad hopped on his feet to thieve it from her. "Just gimme a leg?" he strained.

"If you wanna go up pull the lever on your right!" Sango called to Kagome.

Kagome wiggled through the Radish's weight and grabbed onto the lever, wrenching it down.

"Gimme, gimme, gimme! Ohh, can't you share?! Let me suck on the tail!" The toad continued battling for Sango's food. Once he was near swiping reach, she shoved the newt into her food and chewed cattily.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o

The Radish demon and Kagome landed on the upper and final floor. Both stepped out from the elevator, ogling the crafty designs of Chinese bellflowers painted on the walls. The arched ceilings of a single hall accompanied with tall vases led to two red, wide doors lit by the vague lights of crimson lamps. Quite overly fancy, it was.

The Radish demon tiptoed back into the elevator, bowing at Kagome who bowed back until the doors shut on him.

Kagome, at a moment's notice, was standing at the red door that radiated with immorality. She took a breath like she had on the bridge with Inuyasha and brought her fingers to sling around the bullion handle.

"Aren't you even going to KNOCK?" The devil-faced door knock pestered behind a masculine voice, making Kagome tear away. "You're the most pathetic little girl I've ever seen."

Kagome's petrified eyes grew wider as the door unlocked itself, flying open in a heavy creak to reveal an enchanting room of gold, red and lavender. A row of doors after the first clicked open as well, until the entrance resembled that of a leading hallway. The chandeliers lit willfully, highlighting the treasury rooms.

Somehow, Kagome could hear the devilish voice of the bathhouse owner from her distance, "Well, come in."

Kagome needed a moment to gather herself once more, but she wasn't allowed it…

"I said—" A long-nailed finger gestured for their guest to come in. "—Come IN."

"ACK!" Kagome's voice shriveled behind her throat as an invisible grip on the front of her shirt dragged her into the household.

The doors locked behind her in phantom speed as she was whisked through the rooms, down the dark shades of the hallways and into the main room. Kagome tumbled across the carpet when the magic had released her, her face buried into the lent balls of dust that were imprinted in the carpet's markings. Kagome whined and sniveled, rubbing her nose.

"Quiet down. You're making a racket."

The thirteen year old girl swayed her head around to the man writing away at his desk.

His brown untamed hair was crinkled and tangled all the way to the carpeted floors, his eyes a captive crimson. Luckily, they weren't on her, but on the contracts he was signing. He didn't look like a bad person. He had a regality about him Kagome couldn't quite pinpoint.

The aura was quiet for too long…

"Excuse me!" Kagome revived. "I was wondering if you could give me a job?"

This Naraku person's pen immediately halted in its trail of cursive. He raised a talon finger and traced a straight line in the air with it. Kagome's lips zipped closed on cue.

"MMPH!" Kagome tore at her mouth. "MMMM!"

Naraku chuckled. "I do not wish to hear such a stupid request from you. You're just a reeking, useless weakling and this is certainly no place for humans." He dropped a bag of gold nuggets into a box, thinned eyes crossing Kagomes. "It's a land for the demons and my bathhouse is where they come to replenish themselves." He placed a cigarette between his teeth. "And you humans, always make a mess of things. Like your human parents, who gobbled up the food of the demons like worthless pigs."

Kagome's mouth worked restlessly to undo the spell as she listened without an 'eep', but her slender body was still quivering.

Naraku opened his finger, a flame of fire igniting at the tip. "They got what they deserved and you should be punished also." He lifted the immortal fire to his cigarette, sucking in the tobacco's intoxication. "You could be a piglet." He contemplated while puffing out fogs of smoke through his nostrils. "Or maybe you'd prefer a lump of coal?"

Kagome whimpered at his sudden cackling.

"I can see you shaking, my dear." Naraku smirked wolfishly while tilting his chin up. "To be honest, I'm impressed you made it this far, but I'm sure you had some form of help. Let's thank whoever helped you, shall we?" Naraku's lip twitched. "So just who was it, dear? Why don't you TELL me—" he unzipped her lips with the wave of his finger.

Kagome blinked as her mouth fell from the binding seal. She waited a moment to get the feel of using her lips again before yelling, "PLEASE, will you give me a job?!"

Naraku's annoyed fist bashed the table, startling his nuggets. "DON'T start that again, Wench!"

"Please, I just wanna WORK!"

"Don't….start…THAT." Naraku looked to be infuriated., for the desk was beginning to tremble and his hair was whirling insanely. The color of the room blackened into a demonic feel as the window drapes and contract sheets scattered against an unusual wind.

Kagome gaped as the man erupted from the other side of the desk and landed before her, shoving his face in hers.

"Why in the hell do you think I should give you a JOB, human?" Naraku stabbed her breast with his claw repeatedly. "Any demon can see that you're a LAZY, spoiled crybaby and you have NO manners."

Kagome took in all his verbal battery as her hair fizzed with every jab, her eyes staring widely forward while he circled her smaller body.

"This is a high class place I'm running here, so there's no job for YOU, human. Now get out! I've got all the lazy bums I need."

Kagome began to whimper in displeasure as Naraku's breath attacked the flesh on her nape from behind, causing microscopic hairs to stand high and mighty.

"Or maybe I'll give you the most difficult job I've got and work you until you breathe your very last…" Naraku's nailed fingers crawled up Kagome's neckline, latching onto the skin of her throat one by one. "BREATH."

Before anything further could happen, a ghastly thud quaked along the floors of the room...

A second earth quaking thud came right after, until the books on the shelves and desks came crashing to the ground. A sudden trilling cry sent pangs in both Naraku and Kagome's sensitive ears. A stubby foot exploded through the wooden wall.

It looked like…a baby's foot.

"Damn it," Naraku hissed, shoving Kagome out of his way. "You woke up Akago!" He was by the shredded drapes and busted wall in a flash, trying to console the unseeable child. "There, there, Akago! N-No need to cry!" Naraku caught the whiff of Kagome's stanching scent, before snapping in her route, "WHY are you still here, Wench?! I told you to LEAVE!"

"I want you to give me a job, please!" Kagome demanded more forcefully than ever.

"HUSH, Wench! You're disturbing Akago!"

The overgrown foot of the child thwacked Naraku upside the head, causing his looser hair strands to straddle over his face.

He gave an uneasy smile and ducked his head back behind the curtains. "Now, now Akago! Don't be angry!" He ducked the splintering wood the child had apparently chucked. "That's a good boy!"

"I'm NOT leaving until you give me a stinking JOB!"

"Okay, OKAY!" Naraku raged at her, face half-covered by the curtain with one eye burning into her meager soul. "Just be QUIET--I'm coming Akago!" With that, he disappeared into the other room.

Things started to quiet down, to Kagome's stunned shock.

But Naraku hadn't returned yet. She sighed out from either relief or impatience. A contract sheet from the mess splattered on the carpet glided over to Kagome. A pen soared beside her and she took both.

"Sign your name away and I'll put you to work." Naraku reorganized his hair and picked out the splinters of wood from his scalp, using his handful finger of magic to rearrange the chaotic clutter of the office. "If I hear one little complaint out of you you'll be joining your parents in the pigpen."

Kagome pointed to the paper unsurely. "So I--Do I sign my name right here?"

"JUST sign it. Do you want the damned job or not?"

Kagome bent down in front of the fireplace and began doing what she was told.

"Can't believe I took that stupid oath. To give a job to anyone who asks." Naraku adjusted the frames of his portraits as his belongings stacked back into place on their own bewitched wills. "Ridiculous. I hate being so nice all the time."

Kagome locked her tongue between the corner of her lips as she scribbled her signature, her long hairs falling over the paper.

She remembered back in school when her parents always signed things like this for her...

"Are you DONE yet?"

The contract slid from Kagome's palms and winged itself back to Naraku's hand.

"Hmm," Naraku studied the autograph. "So, your name is Kagome, is it?"

"Y-Yes sir." Kagome bobbed her head.

"Such a lovely name…" Naraku's ominous hand hovered over the fine print, the gravity of his magic peeling off a few letters of her name and replacing them. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the letterings of Kagome's signature, smirking with menace. "And it belongs to ME now. From now on your name is…._Kikyo_, you got that?"

_'Kikyo….?' _The name sounded like a ghostly haunt in the back of Kagome's mind.

"Answer me, Kikyo!!"

"Y…Yes sir!"

Just then, an ear-pleasuring accent of familiarity added itself to the conversing.

"You called for me?"

Kagome raised her head to crane it at the boy beside her. _'Inuyasha!'_ she wanted to yell happily, but she was more overthrown by his cold-eyed emotionless stare that he wouldn't grant over her.

"This girl signed a contract, so set her up with a job." Naraku spiraled a finger around a brunette tress of his, never cutting his glassy eyes at Inuyasha. "And DON'T go soft on her, Inu-_yasha_. Or I'll gladly send you packing."

"Right." Inuyasha answered robotically. He looked at Kagome with a solemn glint, his mane's hair follicle swishing a tad at the slight head turn. "What's your name, human?"

"Wha…?" Kagome frowned confusedly. "Kago…oh, i-it's Kikyo." She sealed an oath on her heart that for a moment, his eyes glared with resentment.

"Alright, _Kikyo_. Follow me." With that simple order, Inuyasha led her into the depths of the halls, never walking too close.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The elevator ride seemed like hours were passing them by as they stood there, side by side, immobilized to say anything to the other.

But Kagome couldn't keep her curiosity shimmed down in her stomach pits. She crossed her upset eyes at the black-haired boy, finally speaking, "I…Inuyasha, uh—"

"DON'T talk to me." Inuyasha's steeled eyes cut hers, but soon they returned to staring at the nothingness that engulfed him. "And you will address me as MASTER Inuyasha."

Kagome withered back.

He sounded just like them. All of them.

Betrayed, she shrunk back into herself and gazed at her feet…

Why was Inuyasha acting so cold-blooded...? Was he really deceiving her all along?


	3. Brewing Fondness

**_"Brewing Fondness"  
_**

**Disclaimer:**_ Hm, this chapter is actually short, but it's somewhat cute, too. I wrote this all this morning before I went to school. Enjoy, my loves! _

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

Kagome achingly tagged after Inuyasha as they hiked down the staircase to acquaint her with the rest of the staff.

The staff members of women and toads didn't exactly find her a darling treat, however.

"I don't care if Naraku gets angry with us." The head chief of the organizers leered.

"We're not taking humans." His assistant sharpened.

Inuyasha glared at their arrogant smiles. "She's already under contract."

"What?!" Both toads were mentally pleading to hear something else.

"I promise to work very hard." Kagome bowed respectfully, with all her dignity ignoring the hideously stereotypic comments at her ears.

"We're not gonna take her in our department," one of the women huffed.

"She'll stink up the whole place!" Another fanned her sleeve in front of her nose to wave away the stench of Kagome's human fuses.

"We don't want 'er!" The male toads argued.

Inuyasha managed to retain a growl from his chest. "Three days of our food and her _smell_ will go away. And if she doesn't work hard," he smirked at Kagome. "Roast her, boil her, do whatever you want."

Kagome couldn't believe her ears! The same boy, with the bizarre charisma and care for her, was suggesting they devour her for their own purposes?

She tried to look collected and tranquil, but the anger in the squint of her eyes was radiant. However, Inuyasha didn't look at her during her death glare.

The toads seemed to grin and plot amongst themselves.

"Now," Inuyasha took governance over them. "Get BACK to work! Where is SANGO?"

"What?!" Sango sneered on the other side of the room, her back relaxed against a wall post. "Don't you dump her on me!"

"You SAID you wanted an assistant."

"That's perfect," the head chiefs guffawed. "Give the girl to Sango."

"Awww, great." Sango cooed sarcastically.

"KIKYO," Inuyasha jabbed his gruff voice at her. "Get going."

Kagome flinched out of her temperamental state and nodded. "R…Right!" Without a quarrel, she trotted to Sango.

"Why are you always picking on me?" Sango roared at Inuyasha's retreating back. "You owe me one, Inu-YASHA. You hear me?"

"Hmph." He disappeared behind the crowd of workers.

Kagome snuck a glimpse back at Inuyasha. She followed the rhythm of the way his hair danced against his calves and the confidence of his walk. That was the Inuyasha she had met. Not this cold-hearted boy with the heart-grating smirk.

Her fluttery eyelashes drooped over her russet eyes.

"Come on!" Sango called.

Kagome hesitantly answered to her commands and skipped after her through the hallway, out of everyone's eye.

When they reached a serene section of the hallway, Sango spun around and exclaimed elatedly to Kagome, "I can't believe you pulled it OFF!"

"Huh?" Kagome swallowed, a sweat drop dripping off her temple. "Pull it off…?"

"You're such a DOPE! You had me really worried." Her tone was playful for the first time Kagome ever witnessed. "Now keep on your toes and if you need anything, ask me. Okay?" Sango winked.

As much as Kagome wanted to, she couldn't match Sango's cheerfulness with her own. Instead, she dropped her head, weary lines of tiredness decorating around her eyes.

"….Kay," Kagome mumbled.

"Hm?" Sango cocked her head. "What's wrong?"

"I just don't…feel so good." Kagome swallowed down some rising fluids.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"So, this is our room. A little food and some sleep and you'll be fine." Sango switched on the suspended lamp as she made way across the room, two women sound asleep between the covers laid out on the flooring.

Kagome stood obediently behind her as she rummaged through the closets for clothing.

"Here's your apron, you'll have to wash it yourself." Sango handed down the pink hakama pants and navy-blue apron to Kagome. "You're so puny…" She muttered while digging through the folded attire.

Kagome's mind was somewhere else at the time, so she paid no attention to the comment.

Sango whipped out a large pink Hitoe that matched her own. "Hmmm," she measured the cloth with Kagome's body. "Yeah, WAY too big." She tossed it aside.

"S-Sango…" Kagome almost choked over her own following question. "You…know Inuyasha?"

"What about him?" Sango's voice was dry and uninterested.

"There aren't two of him here, are there?"

"TWO Inuyasha's?" Sango almost laughed. "I can barely stand one.--Too big." She folded in another Hitoe. "He's Naraku's henchman; don't trust anything HE says."

Kagome sighed internally. Before Inuyasha's last words could tiptoe into her mind any deeper, she cringed and winched in agony of her stomach's spasms. She bent over on her knees, face buried into the soft material of her clothes.

"Ahhh, here we go." Sango held up a small Hitoe for Kagome, just to find her moaning on the ground. "Wha…what's wrong with you? Are you feeling okay?" she concernedly massaged her backbone.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0

The rise of daybreak was descending upon the bathhouse.

In the heart of Naraku's bathhouse, he stood at the balcony in a poncho of rime-white fur.

"I trust to leave everything to you until I return," the scarlet-eyed man half-smirked over Inuyasha, who dutifully nodded. "Hmph. Make sure that insolent girl behaves. Report to me if she makes one little mistake so I can send her to the pigpen."

Inuyasha, at first, only stared within an unblinking emotionless eye.

"Farewell…" Naraku grumbled as he fitted the head of a green-muzzled baboon over his face. "Shippo—"

A young fox demon with carroty hair pinned back by a ribbon perked up in position, rubbing his sleepy eye.

"Come." Naraku leaped onto the railing of the balcony and rocketed into mid-air of the mist, gliding earthwards to momentarily push his heel off the crowns of buildings.

The fox demon sighed and morphed into a white goose to soar after his master.

Inuyasha silently walked over and shut either slide-door.

0o0o0o0o0oo0o

The thick fogging of morning was slowly evaporating around the bathhouse's land now, but the owls were still crooning.

Twittering birds let their early-rise cheeps echo amongst the room of worker women, who, at the moment, were sound asleep.

All except for one…

Kagome was tucked under her thick layer of blankets, sobbing softly to herself. Her slim body trembled in her curled ball-pose, her eyes shot wide and afraid. She ended her noise-making quickly though as one of the slide-doors cracked open, letting a sliver of light envelope her head. She blinked as the windowing of light seemed to stretch wider across her as the door fully peeled open.

The soft sound of bare feet sinking into the cushions of the women's blankets told Kagome to immediately close her eyes and block it all out.

Who on earth was coming?

And was it for her?

Or for a sexual encounter with one of the women?

She froze inside herself, straining to keep quiet. But she could barely restrain the nerves to flinch when something caressed her cheek behind the blanket.

"…Meet me at the bridge," the handsome voice whispered. "I'll take you to your parents."

It was a hand of warm fingers…

It was--

Before her thoughts could trail on, the hand was gone within a flash, and the light from the door had closed.

Kagome yanked up in a stunned gasp, twisting her body around to see nothing but the bodies of slumbering women. She, with a sigh, fanned out her pink Hitoe and Hakama pants.

The first panes of sunlight were peering into the bathhouse as she silently made her journey down the stairs where the elevators were inactive. She migrated to the boiler room, her heart filled by eagerness and anxiety. As she pulled back the tiny door with the quietest of motions, she crawled into the room of the snoring Myoga and hurried over for her shoes.

…Wait, her shoes?

"M…My shoes are gone!" she quietly panicked, biting her nail as her eyes rambled left from right.

A soot ball's head poked out from over the edge of a mouse hole compacted with peeking eyes. It gestured a small arm for the others to emerge as well. But as they did, they carried out either yellow sneaker in a fit of rustling bodies, as if they were operating through a parade.

Kagome's eyes lightened in the glints of morning sun as they stopped in front of her with her belongings and departed.

"Thank you!" she chirped, snuggling her foot into one sneaker and then the other, before tapping her toes onto the ground to wedge her heel all the way in.

The soot balls followed her until she was the door, jumping excitedly at the limit of their border. Kagome glimpsed back at them with confusion reflected off her wide irises, before that confusion turned into delight. She smiled and waved her farewell and then left with a chuckle.

Soon enough, she was confidently climbing the fatal staircase she was crawling down yesterday. She shaded her eyes with a hand to look over at the isolated island she once came to. With the apprehension mounting in her little heart again, she ventured to the bridge, astonished at how empty it could be, just like yesterday afternoon.

Glad that no one was here to witness her meeting with Inuyasha, she jogged out onto the panels of the bridge. She expected a long-haired charmer, but instead, found a black cloak with a white mask. It simply stood there, hunched and wraith-like, watching the rhythm of her deflations and inflations of oxygen.

Kagome gathered the last morsels of her renewed courage and puffed her chest out. She casually walked past the phantom, but couldn't help the need to begin scurrying the moment she passed him. A bit embarrassed by it, she rotated around for the wraith's reaction.

But the bridge was once again empty.

"Follow me," spooked the voice behind her.

Kagome gasped and spun around, thankfully to meet the indigo-eyed Inuyasha who had so securely helped her into this world. There was a faint and almost invisible smirk on his face. One that made her internally gulp down all the rising bumblebees in her pit.

Kagome followed him through the hedges of exotic flowers, but at his quick-pace of merely walking, she found it a little difficult to keep up.

"We don't have much time," Inuyasha hastily declared as the flower-hedges spread further apart from each other to let him pass between their narrow passages. "If you're found here, you'll be turned into a pig yourself."

Kagome watched the rough swishes of his hair from the back of him, blinking at all the urgency whilst those same flower-walls closed back in on her into a narrow path. She side-stepped her way through, blinking up at Inuyasha's larger form.

Roosters' crows found their eardrums to inform them they had arrived to the barnyard without dilemma.

Inuyasha calmly proceeded down the steep hill of grassy earth, "You must never come here without me. Understand?"

Kagome jogged after him, careful not to slip to put herself in another rescuing from him. "I understand," she answered sweetly to break the tension in the atmosphere.

She wanted so badly to ask him about yesterday, but she figured it would be inappropriate and dismissed it from her memory bank. Inuyasha was here now and that was all the mattered.

The grunting oinks became louder and louder the closer Kagome reached the pigpen. Inuyasha stood at the entrance as she nervously strolled in, glancing fearfully up at him.

He nodded in his approval for her, and she rushed to the gates of the pigpen in a heartbeat.

"Mom, Dad, Sota are you alright?! It's me, Kikyo!" Kagome, however, realized they were locked away in their sleep. "Hey, wake UP! …Mom! Dad! Sota!"

The ear of one of the pigs made a flapping flutter at her voice.

Kagome's heart cracked. "What's wrong with them, are they sick?" she turned her pleading questions to Inuyasha, who stepped in beside her.

"No," he smirked. "They ate too much; they're sleeping it off."

Kagome bit her lip, displeased by his information. She yanked her head into the pen's direction, tears brewing and moistening the white of her eyes.

"Don't you WORRY, I PROMISE I'll get you out of here just don't get any fatter or they'll EAT YOU!" with that hard yell of frustration, she bolted out of the pigpen in a fury of tears, leaving Inuyasha to hauntingly watch.

0o0o0o0o0oo0o0o0o0

Butter-winged butterflies ambled by the boy and girl hiding behind one of the hedges. The sun had fully risen and shed its light on their backs in patches of bathing warmth. Something Kagome hadn't felt in awhile, now…

The raven-haired pre-teen tucked her face away into her knees as she sat against the hedges. Inuyasha watched over her cowering figure, but this time, under understanding and tendered eyes. His hand reached into the front pocket of his Haori. He uncovered a pair of folded clothes and nudged then over to the disheartened Kagome.

"Here are your clothes. Hide them," he gently urged.

Kagome lifted a sleepy-eyed face to the material she had barely recognized. In a flurry of shock, she snatched the clothes from his grasp and hugged them into her breasts.

"I-I thought they'd been thrown away," she asked wonderingly up at the handsome boy.

Inuyasha's facial muscles appeared to gentle even further. "You'll need them to get home."

He rotated his body and knelt down closely beside her, digging back into his front pouch-pocket.

Kagome gazed over him for a moment before bringing her intentions back on the clothing. She instinctively dug her fingers into the pocket of her shorts and to her amazement, discovered a dirtied card.

"My goodbye card's still here!" she hoisted the parchment closer to her face to read. "Ka…go…me," she squinted. "Kagome!" she spun around to Inuyasha. "That's…that's my name, isn't it?!"

Inuyasha gave a solemn nod apart from his earlier displayed compassion. "That's how Naraku controls you, by stealing your name. So hold onto that card. Keep it hidden. Do NOT lose it. While you're here, you must call yourself Kikyo, got it?"

"I can't believe I forgot my name!" she ranted softly, her eyes round and wide on him. "He almost took it from me…"

Inuyasha tilted his head with a half-smirk at her complete innocence. The simper quickly frowned into a mask of seriousness, "If you completely forget it, you'll never find your way home."

…Kagome nodded quietly, clutching onto the card.

A cloud of melancholy shaded over Inuyasha's face as he looked out into the open gardens, speaking lowly, "I've tried everything to remember mine."

"…'Inuyasha' isn't your original name?" Kagome blinked, eyebrows knitted back.

"No, my first name was allowed to be kept. It's my last name that I need, which is the biggest mystery of all," but then his eyes gleamed with a slight laughing light when he turned them to her. "But for some reason, I remember yours...Kagome."

Kagome's cheeks fell hostage to the hostile rosy pink. Her name sounded lovely in his mouth. She praised it.

Either he didn't notice her fluster or didn't care, he immediately turned his smile into his lap to unravel a package of rice-balls.

"Here you go," he offtered. "Eat this; I know you're hungry."

Kagome smiled sadly at his care before looking away, bangs feathering her eyes. "No…it's alright."

"Don't make me force you to eat THIS too, stubborn girl." Inuyasha scoffed. "Keh, I put a spell on it so it'll give you back your strength." He lodged it further into her view. "Just eat it, will you?"

Kagome's eyes darted from his determined expression to the mountain of molded rice. She released a sigh of hectic and caressed the ball out of his hands, diving into it with a hesitant bite. Inuyasha watched her suddenly began wolfing down mounts of rice she devoured, her cheeks becoming puffed out and crowded.

As she chewed hungrily, a parade of tears began streaming down her cheeks. She swallowed hard before stuffing the rest in her mouth, her vision completely blurry between the oceans of teary downpour. She couldn't hold it back—she began sobbing.

Inuyasha wrinkled an eyebrow with an uneasy smile as he draped an arm around her quivering shoulder blades. "Eat the rest. You'll be fine, I promise."

Kagome forced her tears back with her hands, taking both rice balls and shoving one's head into her mouth, then the other. She began gnawing once more, just to begin open-mouth weeping even harder as rice fell from her mouth.

Inuyasha's sympathizing smile stretched as he tilted her body further into his to comfort her.

"In-Inu_yasha_…!" Kagome bawled out his name, dropping the food and clinging to his Haori.

He stared down on the smaller girl in a fit of uncharacteristic blinks before snaking the long-sleeved arm around her back. "C'mon, Kagome. Nothin's gonna happen to ya'. Be strong."

"Inu…y-yasha?" she whined, buried deep into his torso.

His heart beat was waltzing faster. She could feel it.

"Yeah…?"

"Can I be weak…j-just for a few minutes?"

It took awhile, but Inuyasha's eyelids dropped into fond softness. "Sure, Kagome. Go 'head and..." his arm hugged her a little closer as his voice dropped smoothly into her ear, "Go 'head and cry."

She cried her heart out into him, yet soothed by the enchanting lullably of his own.

The embrace was tormentingly familiar in between all the pain she seeped out into his breast.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"I gotta get goin' now, Kagome." Inuyasha led her out of the garden, opening the gate for her. "I'll be back to help you soon.—Stay out of trouble while I'm gone, alright?"

They stood face to face, Inuyasha still standing on the grass of the garden while Kagome stood on the stone of the bathhouse territory.

"Thank you, Inuyasha." Kagome gave a bashful smile, hugging her clothes even tighter into her heart to contain herself. "You're a really good friend."

Inuyasha's solemnity fell off the frontier of his face as he allowed himself to smile a little.

Kagome blushed red this time, overcooked with an odd dose of happiness before spinning around on her heel with a giggle.

Inuyasha stepped out onto the patio she trotted away from and watched her diminishing form dash over the bridge until she reached the very end. "Keh...stupid wench," he muttered playfully.

Kagome glanced around in hopes to wave back at him, but caught the hint that he was no longer standing there. She gasped when, out of the corner of her, a fluffy-white figure was seen scaling the skies from cloud to cloud.

"I-Inuyasha's…a demon?"

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Myoga rose from his bundles of blankets with a hand feeling around for his teakettle. He snorted sleepily and heaved up his head, about to tip the kettle into his tube-like mouth before performing an unrehearsed double take.

The raven-haired child who had so persistently begged him for a job was snuggled up to her clothes against the wood of his uncomfortable floor. The soot balls were protectively watching over her as she nuzzled her face against the missed pair of clothes, pink streaks still tinged on her cheeks.

Myoga chuckled in amazement before dropping a blanket over her angelic form. "Simple-minded girl…she must be dreaming about human-hearted love."


	4. Me, Myself and I

_**Chapter: Me, Myself and I**_

_Disclaimer: Forgive me, I've been so caught up with "Keep It Quiet For Now" I've totally ignored "Animal I Have Become" and this story here. I'll try to pace myself. _

_Rushed update. Very rushed. _

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

It started with a soft pitter-patter.

Then prolonged with a hardnosed downpour.

Kagome pressed the knobs of her fingertips into the fogged window. She pushed her button-nose against the glass in an effort to peek up at the sobbing clouds.

"Oh Inuyasha…" she worried. "Why aren't you back yet? You'll catch a cold out there, stupid. And what about my parents? You said you'd come back to help me."

The raven-haired preteen unthinkingly traced directionless line in the distinct vapor that congested over the window. Her troubled eyes fell alongside a dreary breath. She could just hardly see the little roofs of restaurants through then hazy glass from under the curling hairs of her thick eyelashes.

"Inuyasha…" Kagome sighed.

Without her realizing it, he had suddenly appeared, there in her mind, with his back greeted to her to show off that thick onyx mane that absorded the reflections of stars against velvety black tendrils. He craned his head, blessing her the image of his sharp profile. As her thought's venturing proceeded, the black-haired and _older_ boy altogether rotated his body to stare back at her in the wake of an emotionless mask that sculpted his faultless features.

Kagome's fingers tightened to the fabric that sheathed her hysterical heart. _'Why am I thinking of Inuyasha like this? Why is he suddenly in my head over my family?!'_

Twin red spots bloomed across Kagome's cheeks as she couldn't help but feverishly imagine the precise pallor of his violet eyes, the way the sharp ends of his bangs hid fractions of his frowning, full eyebrows away.

Then…

He smiled.

And it was heart-stopping.

_"Kagome..."_

_'Ah, that's right,'_ Kagome's eyelids fell heavily, spiking a fever within herself._ 'That's my name, isn't it? Kagome...Kagome...that's what Inuyasha calls me, isn't it?' _

"KIKYO!"

'_Kikyo? Who's Kikyo?' _

"Where were you this morning, Kikyo?!"

Kagome wobbled off her thoughts with broad eyes before spinning around to the older Sango.

"I was really worried, Kikyo," Sango balanced her hands on her hips, visibly irritated.

"Sango, who's..._Kikyo_?"

Sango blinked a total of three rounds before linking her arms over her chest, "VERY funny, _Kikyo. _You almost had me on a roll there. Now let's stop with the jokes and get down to business already. We've got WORK to do, or did you forget?"

Today was going to be Kagome's big day of labor. So far, she was already a poor sport at it according to Sango's, "Haven't you ever worked a day in your LIFE?" comment.

Just when she was getting the hang of this floor-mopping thing, one of the managers came trudging by.

"Kikyo and Sango," he flipped through his book of arrangements. "You get the big tub today."

"Wha-?! You have GOT to be joking!" Sango's face sneered up into disgust. "That's frog work, Jaken!"

"Orders from Lord Naraku himself," the toad badgered. "Now stop your insolence and do as you're told, woman!"

Kagome looked back and forth between the two. She censored a giggle at Sango's threatening growls and then Jaken's uproarious sprint to avoid her fury.

As Kagome dumped a wooden bucket over the edge outside, she noticed a black-cloaked individual stationed in the garden. It looked to be the same person who stalked her on the bridge this morning, with the eerie white mask.

"Um," Kagome blinked out at the figure. "A…Aren't you getting wet out there, sir?"

The masked being only stared.

"Kikyo, hurry it up!"

"C-Coming, Sango!" Kagome stood from the doors. "I'll leave the door open for you, okay?" with one last smile at the mute person, she stumbled off with her bucket.

The masked individual stepped inside the bathhouse the moment she trotted away.

Kagome and Sango walked down the aisles to their destination, loaded with mops, buckets and rags. When they arrived at the waste-filled bathtub, a ruby-eyed woman was waiting for them.

"Naraku wants this cleaned within ten minutes, so you put those talented scrubbing skills to the test," she flagged her fan to disguise a cunning, red-lipped smile. "I, especially, expect it to be finished by then."

"We could get it done a lot faster if you LEFT, Kagura," Sango pointed out.

Kagome hid behind Sango's back, peering up at the inhuman woman.

"Then on with it already, peasants," Kagura elbowed Sango out of the path, strutting back into the throng.

"Who was that lady?" Kagome tugged on Sango's sleeve like a little sister.

"Kagura," Sango tied up her hair into a tall ponytail. "She's Naraku's personal assistant. But to us, she's bile. –Anyway, let's get this sludge scraped off. We only use these tubs for really filthy guests, as you can see."

The two worked frantically on the grease caked to the inner walls of the concave tub.

"Sango, Kikyo," Kagura bent over the tub's rim while examining her fingernails. "You've got a customer on the way."

"WAIT! Give us a minute!" Sango threw down the rag in a first sign of exploded rage. "This is CLEARLY harassment, URGH! Kikyo!"

Kagome straightened up. "Y…Yes, ma'am!"

"Go get an herbal soak token from the foreman!" Sango heaved Kagome up by the foot and launched her over the ledge of the tub.

"A what? Wait--OW!" Kagome tumbled off the side and implanted her chin into the wooden panels of the floor.

"An herbal soak token," Sango popped over from over the lip.

"All right," Kagome groaned before scampering off.

Just as Sango ducked her head back down, Kagome's footsteps came echoing back.

"Hey, S-Sango?"

"What is it now?"

"….What's a foreman?"

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0

"Hm," Naraku's scarlet eyes evaluated his collection of diamonds and jewels. "One more jewel to complete the rest."

"Naraku?" a fox-tailed child cheeped up.

"What?" Naraku's acidic attitude made the young boy's ears cower.

"Something's coming," the child informed unwillingly.

"Shippo, you naïve fox-pup," Naraku's leering smirk never dimmed under the lamp lights. "I know all and see all. No need to test my intelli…."

"But I wasn't trying to! Honestly! I swear on my life!" Shippo pleaded, unaware of Naraku's vacant pause.

Naraku hauled up from his regal chair, quickly sweeping all his treasures back inside a box and kicking Shippo to the side to near the window, "Quiet, you bastard fox."

Shippo nursed the lump on his noggin, seething at Naraku's back.

"Something's coming," Naraku repeated, thrusting open his windows and sniffing the soggy air scented by the rainwater. "What useless scum is sleeking around in the rain?"

"Maybe it's M…Master Inuyasha?" Shippo kneaded the bad taste off his tongue at having to address his comrade by the name of 'Master'.

"I said QUIET," Naraku hoisted his chin dominantly. "I'm trying to listen."

Shippo hopped out onto the sill of the window Naraku stood in. He watched in bewilder to see the slinking spirits disappear into their restaurants and shut off all their lights.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"I can't waste a token on you, human!" Jaken vented, giving away tokens to the other beautiful young women. "Don't even think of trying to trick me either; your graceless charm is trampled by the beauty of THESE young women, anyhow."

_'So he's saying I'm ugly?!' _Kagome fought to hold back her temper, "But I was told it has to have an herbal soak!"

"Well that's too bad, isn't it? Now, scrub it yourself! – Ah, for the Radish Spirit? One token, m'lady." Jaken continued passing out tokens to the others, unaware of the lurking phantom materializing beside him from thin air itself.

Kagome gasped, her eyes darting to it.

The masked stranger bowed.

She bowed in return.

"Hm?" Jaken looked to his side at what she was bowing to, only to see the red wall beside him. "What are you –"

- _BRING, BRING –_

Jaken panicked for a moment before pressing the phone to his ear, "U-uh, ello? Foreman speaking. Oh, M-M'Lord! A-Ah, yes!"

Kagome's smile widened to see a token drifting out from the basket Jaken held and gliding over to her. "Thank you very much!" she chimed and rocketed off into the crowds.

"Wha-wha! HEY! Get back here, you!" Jaken pointed furiously.

"WHAT'S going on?!"

Jaken turned back to the phone, "U-Uh, nothing Lord Naraku! Everything's fine!"

"We have an intruder."

"I-Is it human?"

"I'm not quite sure. Figure it out and report back."

"Wow, Kagome," Sango eye-balled the token Kagome had brought back to her. "You got us a pretty good one!" she transported the token to Myoga's boiler room and tapped once on the solid wall.

Steaming water came pouring from the conduit embedded in the walls.

"Yuck!" Kagome protected her nostrils. "What's in this water, Sango?"

"Dried worm salt; it's supposed to be good for you," Sango elucidated like it were the most fascinating topic. "I'm gonna go get us some breakfast, so pull on the rope when the tub is full." She hopped off the tub's shell and glimpsed back at Kagome, who was waiting patiently by the rope. "Relax, will you? Shesh."

Kagome watched Sango go and looked back at the murky fountains of water. "Hm," she smiled for no apparent reason and climbed off the tub's outer boundary.

Kagome raised her eyes, only to once again be welcomed with the awkward appearance of the masked stranger who stood in the corner as steam curled around him.

"You again," she wrinkled a brow. "Uh, sir, the bath's not ready yet."

Instead of speaking, he outstretched his arms and revealed to her a stack of tokens.

"There's so many," Kagome smiled dumbly in lack of what to say.

"Ah, ah," he clucked while shuffling the tokens and offering them closer to her.

"What? They're all for me?"

"Ah, ah," he nodded excitedly, urging her further.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Kagome shook her head, inwardly shaking at his forwardness. "I don't need anymore, r-really."

"…" The stranger gazed at her from the black hollow slants of his mask. "Ah…" he pressured edgily, bringing them closer.

"No," Kagome's eyes were big and pitying. "I only need one!"

"Ah…" the stranger sighed and dipped his head, his form fading into a faint outline until he had completely disappeared behind the miasma. The tokens he had donated to her clattered against the timber floor.

Kagome searched around for the stranger's whereabouts, before feeling a burning tinge of liquid tickle under her toes. She looked behind her, just to tug out her hair, "THE BATH IS OVERFLOWING!"

0o0o0o0o0oo0o0o0o0oo0o0o

"M'Lord! M'Lord! M'LORD!" Jaken sped around like a lunatic, flailing his arms.

"Jaken!"

The midget frog sprang into joy to see Naraku calmly making his appearance into the entrance of the bathhouse with Kagura.

"M'Lord! It appears to be—"

"A stink demon and an extra smelly one at that," Kagura finished.

"Mind your PLACE, woman!" Jaken threatened her with his two-headed staff.

"Is that so?" Kagura bent down to the small toad and whisked him off his feet by the collar of his garb. "Then why don't you show us all your manly strength and STALL the beast!" she flung him outside into the rain with the other worker-toads who were struggling to hold off the heap of sludge slugging onto the bridge.

"Hmph," Naraku's narrowed eyes advanced over to Kagura. "Something's fishy about this, Kagura. That doesn't seem like a stink demon to me."

"Don't tell me your nose bailed on you already, Naraku," Kagura hissed.

"Be quiet," Naraku balled his fingers into his palm,"and greet him in."

"What?!" Kagura clutched her identical fans between her enraged grip.

"We have no choice, now deal with it. Just give him a bath and get him out of here as soon as possible," Naraku ears picked up on Kagome's eavesdropping from over the corner side.

Catching his stare, Kagome slipped back behind the edge.

"Kikyo!" Naraku growled.

"Sir?!" Kagome saluted him.

Naraku slicked back his wrinkled waves of hair in frustration, muttering something about 'humans'. "Take this guest to the big tub and take care of him, understand?"

"B…But I—"

"NO, buts, wench," Naraku straightened a finger. "Now if I were you, I would be a smart little girl and do as I'm told."

"M-M'Lord! H-He's HERE!"

Kagome's russet eyes lapped over to the footed muck that stepped forward from underneath the bottom of the entrance cloth, followed by the left foot.

The raven haired human's ebony curls frizzled up into a stiffen as her body rose with nostrils flaring at the horrendous reek of filth that polluted them.

"Ack, DISGUSTING!" Jaken waved the sleeve of his robe to fan away the scent, stepping back with the other blue-faced workers.

A vein clutched the flesh in the side of Naraku's nose in response to the stench casting around them. He strained a snarl at Kagome's offensive gesture of clasping both hands over her nose.

"Hands DOWN," he wheezed. "You'll insult our guest!"

The sludge-molded creature granted his way into the bathhouse, vacant and droopy eyes half-blinded by the oozing of decaying slush. It looked to be in the shape of some type of animal, perhaps an elk or wolf.

"L…L…L-Look about you, customer," Naraku's hailed hoarsely. "Welcome to our b-b-baths!"

If it hadn't been for the atrocious smell sickening her inners, Kagome would've laughed at Naraku's stammering carriage.

Naraku caged a gag back at the rear of his voice as an extended arm of bubbling muck reached out to him, "O-Oh, look it's money. Kikyo, why don't you…t-take the h-h-honorable…customer's money?"

"Y…Yes, s-s-s-s-sir!" Kagome's flesh crawled the closer her feet pulled her to the waiting paw of wringing manure.

She regretfully peeled open her palms and tilted her body sideways once the disgusting sensation of filth-coated coins slushed over her trembling fingers. An infestation of nerve-wracking chills shriveled up her body, sending brief electrocution to her scalp.

"D-Don't make him wait!" Naraku squeezed out of grated, smiling teeth that threatened to rip Kagome to shreds, "Get him to the bath, Kikyo. NOW."

Kagome staggeringly led the murky guest to the halls almost unconsciously as slime oozed out of his pores and flooded the passages.

Sango shoved between the swarm of nose-clamped workers with two bowls of rice, oblivious to the dreaded horror around her. She spotted Kagome tip-toeing her way past the corner of the room's wall and cried out for her, "Kikyo! Wh…Where are you--…"

The dreaded horror finally filtered her nostrils. A wave of blue dusted over her cheeks as she held her breath, only to let it escape in an action of anger as the rice in her bowls desiccated into rotten brown.

"Hey, o-our breakfast!" Sango shook.

"What are you all standing around here for?! Open the WINDOWS!" Kagura fanned her fans madly as she skimmed through the halls of the upper balcony.

She leant over the handrail beside Naraku to oversee Kagome from a safe height.

Kagome lurched into the far corner of the bathtub room as the stink-demon crawled up the sleek outer case of the tub. He rocked his head from left to right, seemingly hesitating while investigating the murky waters. Within one quarter of a second, he dove head-first into the large bath bowl and erupted tidal waves of worm salted-water to overflow the angles of the room, washing over Kagome in the process. She guarded her bucket of tokens the masked figure had presented her and fought not to skid into the now-slimy surfs of bathwater.

The stink-demon's head and paired tentacles surfaced from the swampy water. His saliva-dribbling mouth slacked as he examined the tentacles as if they were extraneous objects that didn't belong to his body. He glided to the rim of the bathtub and grumbled out an intangible request to a slime-covered Kagome.

She stared at him for a confused moment before her breath hitched back up.

"Oh!" Kagome brought her eyes up and down from her bucket of tokens to the stink-demon, "J-Just a minute sir, this won't take long!" She rummaged her way through the drying muck that had now branded on her vulnerable flesh.

Naraku heckled evilly to himself at Kagome's sordid appearance, "Disgusting."

"I don't think it's very funny," his assisting fox-demon opinionated during his seated stance on Naraku's shoulder. "She's actually pretty tough."

"Silence," Naraku's fingers curled into a fist against the crimson banister. "The fact that she's human defines what she is, and 'tough' isn't the proper meaning.—Now let's see what the wench does next, shall we?"

"Look, she's trying to refill the tub!" Shippo pointed a shaky finger down below.

Kagura accompanied Naraku's side, along with Jaken, "And she's dropping bath tokens in the process—wait, who the hell gave her all those bath tokens?!" she snarled over Jaken's short stature.

"D…D-Don't lookit me! I didn't do it!"

As the channel for bathwater lowered itself above the monstrous head of the demon, Kagome folded up her hakama pants to waddle over to the bathtub. She scaled up the tub, slipping and aching, but all along held fast to the determination that wrapped her eyes.

A smoggy exhale of eagerness escaped from the smelly beast's mouth and misted over her face. She dropped her chin lightheadedly before regaining her shivering limbs and reaching for the rope that would unleash the water from the pipeline.

Shippo's eyes gleamed with emerald-gemmed fascination, "Lookit 'er go!"

"Hmph," Naraku's eyes went in tight.

Alas, almost like he had bewitched a spell over her, Kagome's body plunged into the slimy liquid with the stink demon after she gave the lasso rope a one-handed tug.

Water came tumbling down over the demon's large head until the herbal soak swelled over the ledge of the concave tub and reeled along the wooden floors of the bath room like a grotesque ocean of quagmire seas.

"Oh no!" Shippo's fangs clattered. "She fell in!"

"Damn that human," Kagura reviled. "That's our best herbal formula she's wasting!"

Naraku didn't even express any anger, but simply watched in degrading interest. Despite the blinding condensation that coiled to the ceiling of the bathhouse, he could specifically pinpoint the squirming legs through the cloudy waters. Kagome's upper half had remained buried in the encrusted mounts of sludge that glued themselves to the bottom of the bathtub, her legs writhing for liberation and oxygen.

"She'll drown," Naraku concluded, a grimace marring his attractive face.

The stink demon's tentacle elongated itself and curled around Kagome's tiny ankle, hauling her out of the flowing veins of herbal soak bathwater. He held her to his hollow eyes; she looked half-dead. He then caressed her to his side as the water rushed and shrouded over his mucked body.

"Hey, she's still alive!" Shippo's childlike voice spiked with uplift.

Kagome's heavy eyelids unpeeled to let the smart of water skulk into her blurred eyes. Her head was against something solid and ramrod.

"Huh…?" She edged her body away from the side of the stink demon and mindfully forced her tiny fingers between the currents of water flow.

Kagome searched for the obstacle that had poked her until her persistent fingers eventually brushed it.

"Kikyo!" Sango splashed into the flooded room bare-footed. "Kikyo, are you alright?!"

"I'm fine, Sango!" Kagome certified back, still holding strongly onto the object she ascertained.

"D-Don't worry, stay right where you are! I've come to help you!" Sango wrapped a sash around her nose to shelter her from fainting off the demon's body odor. "It's gonna be fine, I won't let him hurt you."

The fire in her eyes was flattering and almost comforting, but it didn't disperse the concern that had barked itself in Kagome's almond eyes.

"No, Sango! He needs help! It feels like there's a thorn in his side!" Kagome applied a ripple of pressure into her small muscles and jerked on said object to prove her theory.

"A thirn?" Sango's eyes shot into wideness.

"It won't come out!" Kagome's childish tone scalded.

"What's this?" Naraku tipped forward to where his adam's apple pinned itself to the handrail of the upper deck level. "He has a thorn?—Jaken! Get the staff down there."

By the impatience that accented his order, Jaken scrambled to meet his goal, "Y-Y-You all heard the Lord! MOVE IT!"

Naraku pivoted his blaring eyes to Kagura, "That includes YOU, Kagura. Now get down there and HELP that pathetic girl!"

Kagura sizzled at his coarseness, but unenthusiastically coasted earthwards to meet Sango and Kagome, "Listen up, ingrates!"

Kagome and Sango whipped their heads around to the red-eyed woman.

"That's no stink demon we have on our hands," Kagura clasped her hands and spelled forth a spiraling rope before tossing it to them, "Use this rope!"

The younger human girl leaned back into the bulky body and attempted to tie the wry rope onto the 'thorn' protruding out of the demon's side. Trembling with anxiety, the rope continued to slip off the object countless times and Kagome's nerves were budding rickety.

"What's taking you?!" Sango reached in to lend aid to Kagome and with a firmed hand, began binding the rope to the thorn. "Hold on tight and don't let go just yet."

"Got it!" Kagome nodded, subdued in the waters that inundated into her mouth.

"Get in there, everyone!" Jaken assembled the staff to take their positions on the other end of the rope.

"We've got it tight!" Kagome endorsed.

"EVERYONE!" Jaken perked himself on a pedestal, stealing Kagura's fans from her, "On my command! And, HEAVE!"

"HEAVE!" The staff heaved back with all their might in numbers, Sango and Kagome at the head of it.

"HEAVE!" The customers roared with ecstasy.

"H-Heave!" Kagome gave the rope one last final tug of settled strength before a sudden watery gush of mud spurted out along with the object. "A b-bicycle?!"

"That's what I thought," Naraku, still above them all, smirked.

"Heave, Kikyo, heave!" Shippo bounced up and down with his own miniature fans.

Kagome pulled on the levers of the bicycle and beget a mudslide of obstacles to discharge out of the demon's side in a colossal heap of debris.

"What the—AH!" Sango scurried out of the way of excessive tangled trash while Kagome braced herself on the edge of the bathtub.

When the avalanche of junk conclusively ended, everyone peered out from behind the refugee of the walls in curiosity and shock.

Kagome yanked out the fishing line that had stayed wedged in the demon's backside until it popped free. A spray of airy grime ejaculated and the mountainous demon's body evaporated under a thankful sigh and diffused into the water. But just as all the water lowered and streamed even more ferociously, it swathed around Kagome and morphed into a fist that enveloped her body before she could scream. The rest of the flood raged into the halls, only rising up to the knees nonetheless.

"KIKYO!" Sango cupped the side of her mouth to resonate her calls over the summits of forceful waves. "Kikyo, where are you?!"

Kagome gazed blankly through the ripples of water that fisted her body, somehow managing to breathe as air bubbles wiggled out of her parted lips.

A twosome of upright ears perked out of the calmed water before her, rising to expose bloodshot eyes and shortly the dripping muzzle of a white-pelted dog. The gigantic creature narrowed its taut eyes on Kagome's shell-shocked face, lips mouthing to the majestic folds of its dimensioned accent, "_Well done, Higuarshi_."

The white demon's body recovered from the water fully and disappeared spellbindingly behind the winding steam.

The fist of water that had enclosed her soon fell around her shriveled toes.

Blink, blink.

Kagome peeked down into the cracks of her finger margins to gasp at the herbal ball that had been somehow placed in her holding without her knowing it. She lifted her incredulous sight to where the wet dog's head once was.

"Lord Naraku," Shippo waggled his nose. "Who was that?"

_"_InuTaisho," Naraku answered contemptuously.

"Inu…Taisho?"

"M'Lord!" Jaken echoed. "Th-the floor is filled with GOLD nuggets that demon left behind!"

"Back off!" Naraku snapped at the drooling workers who immediately devoured the nuggets with their digging hands, "InuTaisho is still here, you fools!"

The remaining water in the tub bubbled with life. Kagome backed away from it, embracing the herbal ball that had been given to her with utter protectiveness.

"Kikyo!" Naraku gripped the balustrade. "You are in his way – now step aside!"

"Yes Lord Naraku sir!" Kagome obeyed without question, somehow smiling.

The bubbling water shot into the sky and revealed the grandiose, feathery outline of a large silver-haired dog. The superb being directed its sweltering irises to a bowing Kagome. As she looked up, she swore to herself to have seen a cracked smile on the dog's stretched lips. The demon tipped back its head and elevated profound sights on Naraku who kept his distance on the upper level of the bathhouse.

Naraku's face solidified under a tyrannical frown down on the dripping canine below him. Kagome bit her tongue as the silver-coated demon galloped up the wall of the bathhouse in a battle crying howl with its fangs readied and saber. She waited disbelievingly for the lethal assail Naraku was about to take from the infuriated dog demon, until it…

Never came.

Deliberately the hound rocketed into the ceiling instead of taking Naraku's head with it, detonating a damaging hole in the roof before climbing the clouds to freedom on invisible wings.

All was quiet.

"Hooray KIKYO!" Shippo hooted.

Soon, the whole bathhouse was cheering, customers and workers alike, "HOORAY! HOORAY! HOORAY!"

"Kikyo!" Sango rushed to Kagome in between all the partying racket and took her hands in her own, joy broadcasted across the details of her pleased face, "You did great, Kikyo! We made so much money! That dog demon is rich and powerful! –Maybe you BOUZOS should LEARN from Kikyo over here!"

"Everyone," Naraku announced, looking unnerved by the earlier encounter with the dog demon. A defeated smirk was sketched on his lips by an anonymous artist, "Sake's on the house tonight."

"YAY"

"But first," Naraku gave his workers a toothy leer, "Hand over all the GOLD you picked up."

"...BOOOO!!"

Behind the scenes of it all, that obscure masked being that had offered Kagome the tokens slouched in the shadows. It examined the nugget of gold it founded, a satisfied chuckle in mind.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Kagome swished her feet back and forth while they dangled over the edge of the balcony to the women's suites. She crossed her lanky arms over the banister ledge and propped her chin up on them. A tiresome sigh let itself go from her lungs.

"Hey," Sango smiled as she saddled herself next to Kagome on the wooden balcony.

"Mm," Kagome nudged out a distant welcoming.

"Here, I saved a dumpling for you," Sango stretched out her arm between the wood pillars that situated the restricting banister.

Kagome stared at it emptily until finally persuading herself to take and appreciate the late night snack, "Thanks, Sango."

"It's no big deal," Sango stifled her yawn with a patting hand and adjusted herself into a comfortable position. "Ahhh," her breasts fell. "What a day."

Kagome took her time with her single bite into the luscious dumpling. She chewed like her gums were bleeding, stared afar into an imaginary void that Sango couldn't see.

"…Sango?"

"Yeah?"

"…H-Have you seen Inuyasha?"

"Ugh," Sango spat laughingly, "Not Inu-YA-sha again."

Kagome hugged her shoulders closer to her temples to prepare herself for the answer to come. "Do you know where he is?" Her tone clattered into tremors.

"Hmph," Sango's mouth overlapped the head of her dumpling. "He just disappears sometimes. Rumor has it he runs around doing Naraku's filthy work."

A javelin thorn barbed Kagome's once adoring impressions of the handsome henchman. "D…Does he really?" Her watery words didn't pass up Sango's keenness.

"Most likely," Sango hardened.

"I see," Kagome turned her head to the scenery in front of her paling eyes.

She focused on the illuminated shine of the moon's smiling light that brightened the hoods of grazing clouds. Kagome's cinnamon orbs absorbed the moon's regal splendor, soaking and bathing in its presence. The town of restaurants she had once toddled through with her family was now secreted beneath the depths of the indigo-hued flood the rain had dispatched. The moon's towering reflection lapped in the face of the oceanic oasis below them.

"How pretty," she breathed in the atmosphere of that beauty. "There's so much water, it looks like the sea."

"Well what did you expect?" Sango piped up. "All that rain really took its toll."

Kagome nodded halfheartedly.

"Tell me something, Kikyo."

Kagome cradled a stray hairs that clawed over her eye. "Okay."

"What's between you and Inuyasha?"

"…Huh?"

"You're not deaf, are you?"

Kagome emotionally collapsed into herself. At that moment she wanted to hide away from Sango's accusing stare of sternness, but the spots that blotched on her cheeks were much too plain by now.

"_Kikyo_," Sango warned.

"…I do miss him," Kagome mumbled into the flesh of her suddenly hot arm, "because he's become a very good friend to me." She uncovered the green ball the dog demon had entrusted her with and the fragmental shards of light that sided her pupils rocked vibrantly with optimism_. 'Maybe I don't need Inuyasha to depend on to save my parents. All I need is myself, my faith and that great dog demon's herb.' _

Kagome embraced the herb to her bosom gratefully. _'Just me, myself and I.' _

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

_Just a chapter to demonstrate Kagome's confidence-spurt. _

_Next chapter totally revolves around Inuyasha and Kagome to make up for this one, don't worry. More blood than romance, heh. _


End file.
